Bronze Lucy and Schroeder

News Clippings
and
Press Releases



A permanent bronze statue of Lucy and Schroeder was one of three large pieces unveiled Sunday afternoon, September 21, 2003, outside of the Landmark Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Photo by Scott Cohen/The St. Paul Pioneer Press/The Associated Press)



These articles are arranged from the most recent down, so you'll always find the newest news about Charlie Brown and his friends toward the top; older articles will be located further down, or on previous pages.



‘Peanuts’ Will it ever be time to say goodbye?

October 28, 2004

By Korry Keeker
The Juneau (Alaska) Empire

Ever since I learned to read by poring through the pages of the Chicago Tribune, I’ve been able to depend on newspapers for at least three things

One, there’s a banner on the cover that tells me what I’m reading. Two, there’s a page number and a date in the corner of every page to remind me I’m not holding yesterday’s news. Three, "Peanuts" is somewhere, if not at the top, of the comics page.

Thirteen years ago, at my first journalism job, I found a camera-ready, press-copy of an animated still from A Charlie Brown Christmas. I’ve kept it hanging above my desk for every job I’ve had since then. So you could say that I’m a big fan.

But surprisingly, maybe just to me, the sentiment is not shared by everyone in this newsroom. Sadly, I walk among ghouls, dead to the world and its many foibles embodied by a blockhead and his beagle.

Long story short If you love your comics, and you haven’t seen our reader’s comics survey, you need to start paying attention. The print future of "Peanuts" and "Alley Oop" in Juneau may hang in the balance.

Those of you who are counting know it’s been four years, eight months and two weeks since the final original Sunday "Peanuts" strip appeared, the day after creator Charles Schulz died from colon cancer.

According to an article in Brandweek, and information from United Media, at least 2,460 of the 2,600 newspapers that ran Peanuts in 1999 were still publishing "Classic Peanuts" a year later.

The Idaho Statesman in Boise was one of those 140 papers that decided against re-runs. At the time, then-features editor Vickie Ashwill predicted the paper would receive fewer than 30 complaints. It turns out the Statesman received slightly more than 30, but still fewer than when they changed their television guide and dropped their bridge column to three days a week.

"We canceled Peanuts simply because Charles Schulz had died, and it was a moment where we could choose between running old Peanuts comics or adding a new comic to our limited space that might appeal to different audiences," said Ashwill, now the news editor, by e-mail.

"I am glad that we made the choice to drop it then instead of having to deal with it now," she said. "At some point, Peanuts was to be destined for the archives and books, where it can be appreciated in the historical perspective of Charles Schulz’s life."

When is the right time? Ashwill was blunt. Some others were savage. I wrote Gene Weingarten, a long-time humorist at the Washington Post. His fine column, "Below the Beltway," often covers comics. The Post still runs Peanuts, to his chagrin.

"You won’t like my answer, but it is heartfelt," he told me. "The right time to drop ‘Peanuts’ was the day that Schulz died. I am not a fan of running repeats. And if I were, I’d be running old ‘Calvin and Hobbeses’, and ‘Far Sides,’ not re-running the last 10 years of a strip that hadn’t been really good since the 1970s."

Answers like these are why the cruel winds know my tears, as I sit and stare, reaching, grasping, for anything, nothing.

I assumed, too, that "Peanuts" was well-known around the world. Not so. I wrote to my colleague Alexenia Dimitrova, an excellent investigative journalist at the 24 Hours Daily in Sofia, Bulgaria. We had communicated a few times before.

"No, ‘Peanuts’ is not well known in Bulgaria," she responded. "People here are not very keen on comics. ... I will ask my daughter who is 11 years old - probably she knows better than me this kind of industry."

This September in Ashland, Ore., there was some heartening news. "The Daily Tidings" asked its readers if it could drop "Peanuts." The response was deafening. The editors backed off. They locked the door.

"We wanted to drop it because it’s the most costly comic on our page and it is, in fact, a continual re-run," managing editor Andrew Scot Bolsinger told me. "That said, it represents a certain slice of Americana for some readers, especially older readers who already feel alienated from the newspaper’s many changes. In the long run, we felt it worth the expense, knowing that sooner or later, it’s time will come."

Did you know that Charlie Brown is falling out of favor all over Southeast Alaska? Lucy Van Pelt ... I mean ... the Sitka Sentinel, pulled away the football. But it still runs "Sally Forth." The Wrangell Sentinel eschews Snoopy for five comics including "Henry," who looks like 40 percent of the dudes I went to junior high with.

What if the Empire followed suit? The decision would leave, gasp, Ketchikan, with it’s lovable "Daily News," as one of the few sane communities for miles. The men and women of fair Revillagigedo also have a 24-hour diner and a pulled-beef smokehouse, two more things Juneau should have.

Please, Juneau. Be like Ketchikan. Have a heart.


Museum salutes gentle humor of Peanuts creator

October 24, 2004

By Mike Pramik
The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch

SANTA ROSA - In a Peanuts comic strip from the mid-’60s, Snoopy wanders across the French countryside after being shot down by the Red Baron.

The World War I flying ace enters a farmhouse and, seated at a candlelit table, says wistfully to a mademoiselle

"Soup? Ah, Yes. A little potato soup, and I will be on my way."

A traveler feels that same contentment upon discovering the Charles M. Schulz Museum & Research Center in the Sonoma wine region.

Devoted to the creator of the ever-popular Peanuts strip, the museum is warm and satisfying without being garish or self-serving. The collection offers an intriguing look into the artistry of one of the world’s greatest cartoonists.

The museum is subtle, like Linus’ philosophical musings. It has some color and splash, like Snoopy. It’s a little bit loud, like Lucy. But overall, it’s as unassuming as Charlie Brown, Schulz’s alter ego.

The museum celebrates Schulz’s ability as much as his popularity. You’ll find the requisite gift shop, funny statues of the Peanuts gang outside, even Charlie Brown’s dreaded kite-eating tree (a real sycamore in an outdoor plaza with a kite stuck in its branches).

The collection rises above a trove of memorabilia. The artist’s work and technique are celebrated, and the art of cartooning is preserved and taught.

"The core of this museum was intended to be the comic strip," said Jean Schulz, who was married to the cartoonist for 26 years before his death in 2000.

Charles Schulz, the Minnesota native who moved to this northern California city in the 1960s, drew Peanuts uninterrupted for 50 years. The two-story museum illustrates the history of the strip while providing clues to where Schulz (known as "Sparky" at home) found his inspiration.

The main attraction is a rotating collection of original Peanuts strips. The museum has 8,000 of them, which Schulz drew several times larger than they appeared in print. About 80 are on display at a time, grouped around themes such as art and literature.

Mrs. Schulz, who preserves her husband’s legacy at the museum, said amassing the strips was difficult.

"They weren’t saved at all until the ’70s," she said. "The only strips that were saved were ones people pulled out of the garbage. It’s a shame, but who knew?"

Accompanying the original artwork are rotating exhibits, including the recent "Mad About Peanuts," a look at Mad magazine’s Peanuts parodies.

It will be replaced in November by "Found in Translation," an exhibit of ink paintings by Japanese artist Yoshiteru Otani. The artwork, drawn on handmade paper, incorporates Peanuts characters. For instance, one drawing depicts Lucy floating on top of a vertical brush stroke while blowing a bubble.

Otani has two works permanently displayed in the museum. One is a wooden bas-relief hanging that illustrates Snoopy’s changing personas. The other is a stunning wall-size montage composed of 10 years’ worth of Peanuts strips in black-and-white ceramic. From afar, they appear to depict Charlie Brown running to kick a football that Lucy is holding. The piece is reminiscent of the photograph collage depicting Albert Einstein at COSI Columbus.

Along with those pieces, the first floor has a 100-seat theater where Peanuts cartoons, interviews with Schulz and other selections are shown.

Upstairs, the museum offers insights into Schulz’s work and space for cartooning fun.

A research center contains his business and personal papers, the original strips and drawings, a collection of Peanuts books in several languages, photographs and other data.

Workshops on cartooning are frequently conducted in a nearby room. On a recent summer day, Herb and Jamaal cartoonist Stephen Bentley taught children his techniques.

Around the corner, a room depicts a timeline of Schulz’s career, with some memorabilia marking the highlights. One is a bedroom wall that Schulz painted for his daughter Meredith in the 1950s. A picture of Snoopy is on the wall, as well as examples of a few other Peanuts characters.

The most eccentric piece in the museum also is upstairs a doghouse wrapped in tarpaulin, polyethylene and ropes. It was done by the Bulgarian artist Christo, who once surrounded 11 islands in Florida’s Biscayne Bay with hot-pink fabric.

The museum also has a reproduction of Schulz’s studio, where he drew the comic strip from 1972 until his death.

That’s why the museum is in Santa Rosa, Mrs. Schulz said, although other locations made offers.

"Pairing it up with a winery would have been pointless," she said. "It would have taken the heart out of it.

"If we were in downtown San Francisco we might get more visitors, but it was important to be where the area reflected Sparky."

The museum is indeed tucked away, off of a commercial boulevard. It’s across the street from the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, which Schulz built in 1969. (Open skating for adults costs less than $10, and it is cheaper for children, skates included). The place resembles a Swiss chalet. Inside are small trees and murals of Switzerland.

Schulz often began his workdays with breakfast at the Warm Puppy Cafe in the ice rink before heading to his studio.

Museum visitors can examine the desk and tools Schulz used and scan the titles in his library.

There are several books about golf, and novels such as Ethan Frome and War and Peace, which he mentioned in the strips from time to time.

Mrs. Schulz says her husband often used the books as inspiration. Other times, though, he found it by just doodling while dining at the ice rink.

"Sometimes he would just play with an idea, like how funny it would look if something happened," she said. "He loved Charlie Brown flying off the mound with all his clothes flying.

"He drew so quickly that you just never knew how much he was putting into it or taking out of it. Whenever he drew a smile, he was thinking smile. When he drew hair, he was feeling Linus’ hair."


It’s all about canines Sunday during Snoopy’s Dog Fest

October 8, 2004

By April Wilkerson
The Shawnee [Oklahoma] News-Star

Dog owners often like nothing better than an outing with their furry pals and a chance to socialize with others doing the same.

On Sunday afternoon, an inaugural Shawnee event will combine the best of everything for dog lovers, plus serve as a fund-raiser.

The first Snoopy’s Dog Fest will be held 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Shawnee Airport walk/jog trail, originating at the Japanese Peace Garden near Independence and Airport Road. The event is an awareness tool and fund-raiser for Canine Companions for Independence (CCI), an organization that provides highly trained service dogs to people with disabilities.

The local organizer of the event is Shawnee resident Dawn Ramsey, who is aided by her service dog, Nero.

"I want people to come out and enjoy themselves and see what service dogs can do," Ramsey said. "They’re not just pets anymore. It’s an opportunity to see working dogs and puppies in training."

Snoopy’s Dog Fest will feature a variety of activities for both two-legged and four-legged creatures. The trail will be marked at one, two and three miles, and the public is invited to make a donation of any size to CCI and make the walk. Each walker will receive a goodie bag filled with information about CCI, dog toys, treats and more.

There also will be contests for Best Dog Costume, Best Dog/Owner Look-a-like, and Dog/Owner Costume Combo. Plaques will be awarded to winners in each category. Rowdy RedHawk, the mascot of the Oklahoma RedHawks, plans an appearance a little after 1 p.m., and there will be a socialization park and adoptable animals from Best Friends Pet Clinic.

Local businesses have donated prizes to be given away, including movie passes, restaurant gift certificates, savings bond, and the grand prize, a DVD/CD player.

The Shawnee Jaycees will cook hot dogs for a picnic following the walk. Ramsey will talk about CCI, and she and Nero will give a demonstration on the capabilities of service dogs. Nero, a lab-golden retriever mix, is a hearing service dog who alerts Ramsey to sounds she may not hear. But he’s also cross-trained to help Ramsey with things she cannot do because she is in a wheelchair. Nero can pick up items, hit elevator buttons and many other tasks.

Ramsey said she hopes Snoopy’s Dog Fest lets people see firsthand how important service dogs are to people with disabilities, whether they’re inside their own home or in a public place like a restaurant or shopping mall.

But she also hopes to introduce people to the joy, and challenge, of raising puppies to be CCI dogs. Families raise puppies, often labs, golden retrievers or mixes of the two, from 6-8 weeks old to 11-14 months.

"It’s an investment of your time and money, and a change of lifestyle because you have the puppy with you constantly," she said. "But it’s a heartwarming experience for the entire family, especially when the dog moves on to the training it will need to be put into service."

Puppy raisers are responsible for the socialization of the dog, teaching it basic commands, house etiquette, and some skills required by CCI, such as shaking hands. That will later be transformed into turning a light switch off and on, Ramsey said.

"They are putting the building blocks in place so the dog can continue climbing the ladder," she said. "It can be compared to children in school. They start in kindergarten learning simple things that eventually turn into trigonometry and astronomy."

Several sponsors are making Snoopy’s Dog Fest possible, including Dogwood Veterinary Clinic, Shawnee Trophy Co., City of Shawnee, FireLake Discount Foods and Heartland Champions.


‘Snoopy’ saves the day from burglary

October 8, 2004

By Steve Nash
The Brownwood [Texas] Bulletin

A dog named Snoopy apparently helped interrupt a burglary Tuesday morning in the 1400 block of Avenue B, according to a police report.

A man told police he was in his front yard when he saw his mother-in-law’s dog, Snoopy, walking toward him. He thought the dog had gotten loose and walked him back to his mother-in-law’s house a few houses away. The mother-in-law was not home.

As the man opened the front door to put the dog back inside, he heard the back door open. He ran to the kitchen and saw what appeared to be a flash of blond hair on a person running out the back door. The man yelled for his wife to call 9-1-1, then saw a bicycle, which he believed to have belonged to the intruder, lying near the back door.

Throughout the home, several cabinet doors were open and their contents were disturbed, and items had been taken out of a bedroom chest and placed on the floor. A jewelry box and a file box were empty.

Police took the bicycle as evidence, but no arrests had been made as of Wednesday.


FunMail Announces Peanuts Comics for the First Time on Mobile Phones

Mobile Subscribers Can Now Hang Out with the Charlie Brown and the Peanuts Gang Wherever They and Their Phone Go!

October 7, 2004

PRNewswire

PLEASANTON -- FunMail and United Media just completed a licensing deal for FunMail to produce and distribute Peanuts, one of the most successful and beloved comic strips of all time, for long-time and new fans who are on the go. Charles Schulz’s wonderful characters including Snoopy, are now appearing daily in brilliant color on mobile handset services through the latest offering from FunMail’s Mobile Comics Network (MCN) Peanuts Mobile Comics.

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts are syndicated to over 2400 newspapers worldwide. FunMail’s Peanuts Comics are a "best of" anthology that you lets you download a new one each day to make you smile and chuckle along with rest of Charlie Brown’s gang. Mobile consumers can access this fun entertainment for a monthly subscription fee that gives them unlimited viewing.

FunMail’s Peanuts Comics lets mobile subscribers easily and quickly download an application to a handset that lets them view the daily comic by scrolling each successive frame horizontally on the handset screen. Peanuts Comics are perfectly sized and formatted for each screen size and resolution for most of today’s popular mobile devices. Interested parties should visit www.funmail.com for more information.

"Color mobile phones have elevated the entertainment potential for this rapidly growing medium, especially for the critically important 16-35-year-old demographic," said FunMail CEO Adam Lavine. "Now instead of tracking down the ever elusive passed-around newspaper in their household, mobile consumers can instead spend a fun moment with their favorite Peanuts characters every single day wherever and whenever they choose."

FunMail’s Mobile Comics Network (MCN) has licensed some of the best comic properties in circulation and distributes them on major U.S. carriers including Verizon Wireless, Sprint PCS, AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile and Cingular Wireless. Interested content publishers and carriers should contact bizdev@funmail.com for more information or call 925 250 2442.

Please visit www.funmail.com for more information.


"It’s Your Town, Charlie Brown!"

Santa Rosa’s Launches New Tribute to Charles M. Schulz

October 2, 2004

City of Santa Rosa press release

What would drive Lucy crazier -- watching Charlie Brown catch a football or seeing fifty-five statues of Charlie Brown all over Santa Rosa? Fifty-five Charlie Browns, no doubt, each uniquely painted, by some of Sonoma County’s finest artists.

The City of Santa Rosa, in collaboration with TivoliToo Design & Sculpting Studios and the family of Charles Schulz, presents "It’s Your Town, Charlie Brown," Santa Rosa’s tribute to Charles M. Schulz.

Santa Rosa was a major part in the life of Charles Schulz. After coming to the area in 1958, he spent 42 out of his 50 years writing his Peanuts comic strips in Santa Rosa.

The City of Santa Rosa is proud to recognize Schulz’s work and community contributions with "It’s Your Town, Charlie Brown," Santa Rosa’s tribute to Charles M. Schulz.

In the summer of 2005, fifty-five Charlie Brown statues will be placed around the city for the public to view and celebrate the fifty-five year anniversary of the Charles M. Schulz’s beloved Peanuts comic strip. Each statue will be uniquely painted by local artists who are sponsored by supporting businesses in the community. People of all ages can participate and enjoy this event, from watching the painting of the statues to looking around town for the colorful Charlie Browns.

An auction will be held on October 2, 2005, in which these statues will be available for purchase. The funds raised from this event will go towards local artist scholarships and it is anticipated that enough money will be raised to place permanent pieces at the Charles M. Schulz Airport in Santa Rosa.

Visit www.PeanutsOnParade.com/SantaRosa for more information.


Peanuts earn a place through sheer persistence

September 21, 2004

By Laura Billings
The St. Paul Pioneer Press

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s statue in Rice Park has a Mona Lisa smile that can surprise you depending on when you walk by him. Pass him on an overcast winter day and his face has a "so we beat on" sort of resignation to it. See him on a sunny spring day near the hot dog vendor and his face is full of wry hopefulness.

When I ran into him yesterday, he seemed bemused but welcoming as he looked toward his two new neighbors -- a bronze sculpture of Peppermint Patty kicking a football, and another of that bespectacled Marcie, reading a book on the bench, while Woodstock reads over her shoulder.

These two bronze sculptures, which join three others installed in Landmark Plaza last year, were paid for by the proceeds of all of those plastic Peanuts sculptures St. Paul has had on parade here since the passing of the late, great cartoonist Charles Schulz.

Some critics -- myself included -- have wondered why we dedicated so much civic effort to the memory of a man who, like Fitzgerald before him, couldn’t get out of St. Paul fast enough. (After leaving in 1952, he visited exactly twice.) But over the course of five summers, and some 500 statues, even the most snarling critics have to admit that the Peanuts gang has started to looked very much at home here.

Regular readers of this column know that I’ve been on the wrong side of Snoopy since he was first unleashed in 2000. After I bared my teeth by questioning the essential cuteness of the statues, many readers -- most of them grandmothers -- wrote to say I was a nasty breed indeed. Though I did my time in the doghouse, volunteering at the information booth outside the Science Museum, I still couldn’t understand what all those visitors with their Polaroid cameras saw in him.

Readers continued to complain of my intense anti-Peanuts bias when Charlie Brown came to town, and again when the Lucy statues hit a low point in crass commercialism. (Remember the whimsy and wonder of "Let’s Hang Dry Wall Lucy" and "Leasing Agent Lucy"? Probably not. There was none.)

Some wondered why I was softer on Linus when he and his security blanket spread across St. Paul last summer. (Why pick on a kid who already sucks his thumb?) And some readers demanded to know why I said nothing at all about the doghouses on display this summer. The answer was that they’ve become so ubiquitous, I’d hardly noticed them. And when I did stumble into one, I had to admit they were kind of cute. (Personal favorite the "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" doghouse, held up by books written by Eudora Sheltie, St. Bernard Shaw and Zane Greyhound.)

After all, the Peanuts on Parade have proven there’s a large and appreciative audience for public art, and in a state that prides itself on crop art, Bunyans and butter heads, the more whimsical, the better. Hopefully, St. Paul’s promoters will hit on something just as fetching as Snoopy statues in the years to come.

At the dedication ceremony on Sunday for the new Rice Park sculptures, there was some talk about whether Peppermint Patty and Marcie, both baby boomers, have the gravitas to stand in a park with such historical significance. Of course they do. Whether you like the Peanuts or not, the last five years of parading have cemented them into St. Paul’s story.

As for the critics who say cartoon characters don’t belong in bronze, stop by the new installations and see for yourself if you can read the expression of Marcie, as she reads her book on the bench.

Like her more literary neighbor Scotty, she’s more Mona Lisa-esque than you might imagine.


Fair sculptor reworks creations

September 21, 2004

By Katie Menzer
The Dallas Morning News

The life of a butter sculptor is rarely set in stone.

New York artist Sharon BuMann discovered that harsh reality Saturday night when she realized the sculpture she had been carving the last week for the State Fair of Texas violated copyright laws.

She’s now working day and night to transform her butter version of Snoopy into a cat and Charlie Brown into a ghost before the fair opens Friday.

"There’ll be a few all-nighters," said Ms. BuMann, who has been carving in butter for a decade.

She had designed the sculpture as a Howdy Doody character carving a giant pumpkin. After donning her winter jacket, ski cap and gloves early last week to begin sculpting in the fair’s refrigerated display case, she decided a depiction of Charles Schulz’s It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown would make a better butter sculpture.

It wasn’t until about 10 o’clock Saturday night that she realized her contract with the State Fair specified she could not use copyrighted characters.

And she knows which side her bread is buttered on.

"I didn’t want the State Fair to get in trouble, of course," she said.

So, the giant pumpkin stays, but a child in an artist’s costume will be the carver. Alongside the pumpkin will be ghosts, mice, a cat, a skunk and a crow. "To change canoes in midstream is very frustrating," Ms. BuMann said.

"But now it’s an original design. I really like it."

The sculpture will be displayed in the Creative Arts building.


Snoopy no longer in the doghouse

Statue from final tribute goes for $22,000 at auction

September 20, 2004

By Martin J. Moylan
The St. Paul Pioneer Press

Good Grief! Twenty-two thousand dollars for a doghouse?

But it has Snoopy on it. And it’s by Tom Everhart. He’s the sole artist licensed to depict the characters that his late friend Charles Schulz made famous, explains Linda Shefner-Holden of Miami, Fla.

Shefner-Holden’s was the highest bid during Sunday’s auction of 25 statues of a daydreaming Snoopy with his friend Woodstock perched on his bulbous belly.

The auction, capping off the fifth and final summerlong statue tribute to St. Paul native son and "Peanuts" creator, Schulz, drew 82 bidders to Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul. Another 50 bid live via the Internet.

The doghouses fetched $235,450. The lowest bid was $5,500; the average, $9,418.

This was the fourth Everhart "Peanuts" statue Shefner-Holden has snagged. She has Lucy, Linus and the first one of Snoopy. The three figures cost her about $40,000. She missed getting Charlie Brown in 2001.

"Sotheby’s brought in a customer who outbid me by $31,000," she recalls. "I was very upset. I’m working on finding that guy to get it back."

The take from this year’s auction reversed a three-year slide. In 2000, 61 statues fetched $1,041,500; 63 brought in $459,000 in 2001; 56, $232,000 in 2002; and 40, $153,000 in 2003.

"There was excitement and energy for this last auction," said auctioneer Kurt Johnson, who tossed boxes of "Peanuts" cookies to folks responding to his pitches to take bids higher. "Some might say it’s because of the characters — Snoopy, Woodstock — and the doghouse."

Auction proceeds benefit the Charles M. Schulz Fund. It was established to create and maintain permanent bronze sculptures of the "Peanuts" crew and fund scholarships for artists and emerging cartoonists.

Schulz drew "Peanuts" for 50 years, retiring in 1999. He passed away in February of 2000. At the peak of its popularity, "Peanuts" could claim 355 million readers.

The auction was not the only big "Peanuts" event in St. Paul on Sunday.

Some 5,000 folks attended a Rice Park party that marked the final statue promotion with games, food, music and entertainment.

Schulz family members were on hand before the auction for the unveiling of a fourth bronze statue of "Peanuts" characters. This one, featuring Marcie, Peppermint Patty and Woodstock, is in Rice Park.

Last year, three bronze "Peanuts" vignettes were unveiled in nearby Landmark Plaza.

Sponsors of this year’s edition of "Peanuts" statues will retain 79 of them. Typically, a greater percentage of sponsors let their statues go to auction.

"But this is a great design, and it’s two characters Snoopy and Woodstock," said Sue Gonsior, communications director of the Capital City Partnership, one of the organizations behind the city’s "Peanuts" celebrations. "So, more people are keeping them."

Sponsors paid $3,600 for a basic statue and $1,000 more for customization by an artist. They paid $1,500 more to keep a statue.

TivoliToo Design & Sculpting Studios of St. Paul created and designed the statues for the tributes. It also designed and constructed the permanent bronze sculptures. Area artists decorated each of the statues to create a one-of-a-kind piece of art.

"Peanuts" fan Melissa Porter of Hudson, Wis., bid $10,000 to take home her first statue, "Doghouse of Blues."

"We have a dog and real doghouse," she said. "This will compliment it — and diversify our collection of western art and sculpture.

She’s not sure where the doghouse will go. It might go outside to jazz up her garden, she said.

Kay Anderson, a lifelong "Peanuts" fan, came from Albuquerque, N.M. to take in the final hurrah of St. Paul’s "Peanuts" celebration. She was not among the bidders, though.

"It’s a great celebration," said Anderson, sporting a denim jacket decorated with a snoozing Snoopy atop his doghouse. "Charles Schulz was such a genius. We all wanted the comic to live on forever. And this is a great way to do it."

The Saint Paul Convention and Visitors Bureau, which staffs the Doghouse Information Booth on the Science Museum of Minnesota’s plaza, estimates that more than 3.3 million visitors from all 50 states and 60 countries have journeyed to St. Paul to see the "Peanuts" statues in the past five years.

Where are the current and future homes of the some 500 "Peanuts" statues?

Well, there’s no definitive map of their abodes.

"We tried to keep a list of where they are," says Gonsior. "But it’s hard to keep track of all of them."

There are enough in the Twin Cities that the Travel Channel came to St. Paul to capture them as part of a show on lawn art. They interviewed some people who have them on display in their gardens, by pools."

The show featuring the "Peanuts" statues is expected to air in February.


St. Paul says so long to Peanuts

September 18, 2004

By Karl J. Karlson
The St. Paul Pioneer Press

After five years of summer fun with "Peanuts" characters, organizers have determined reluctantly that it’s time to move on as they begin planning for something new to draw visitors to downtown St. Paul next year.

"We wish it could go on forever, but we’ve accomplished our goals, and it is better to end on a high note than let this dwindle away," said Craig Schulz, son of "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz, whose life and work have been the focal point of the summer tributes that drew more than 3.3 million visitors.

The events featured hundreds of 5-foot statues of characters from the world-famous "Peanuts" gang first Snoopy, then Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and, finally, Snoopy and his erratically flying bird pal Woodstock.

It all draws to a close Sunday with a wrap-up party in Rice Park and the auction of 25 of this year’s 104 "Doghouse Days of Summer" statues.

The five-year homage to Schulz grew from a civic sadness and the desire to honor the cartoonist after his death from colon cancer in early 2000. His St. Paul childhood experiences showed up in — and shaped — much of his "Peanuts" work, from Charlie Brown’s sandlot baseball games to the unrequited love of Charlie’s beloved "little red-haired girl." It was something the city took pride in.

A proposed city tribute to Schulz prompted lots of discussion among civic leaders. When the idea for "Peanuts" statues scattered around the city bubbled to the surface, it quickly caught on.

Copied from Chicago’s popular "Cows on Parade" event in 1999, St. Paul’s celebration was among the earliest in a fad that has swept through many cities, where statues since have featured the likes of horses, furniture, forks, pineapples and pigs.

The difference between most of those events and St. Paul’s was the event’s long five-year run, and city boosters know why.

"It was the characters from ‘Peanuts’ that made the difference," said Brad Toll, vice president of tourism for the St. Paul Convention and Tourist Bureau. "Everyone can relate to them, which was the success of the strip. Who can relate to an ear of corn?"

Because the summer events were free, outdoors and scattered around the city, there was no way to determine official "attendance" figures to measure success or tabulate economic impact.

But it is reasonable to assume that money flowed into the city because of them, with people buying extra film, a bottle of water, a bag of popcorn or a meal for their visits or getting a hotel room for a longer stay.

Tourism officials point to all sorts of positive signs, based on interviews with visitors, a bump in attendance at other family-oriented city attractions and the number of people who stopped at the bureau’s information Doghouse to register their hometowns.

Toll said that over the five years, an estimated 3,362,000 people visited St. Paul (equivalent to more than the entire population of Iowa) to see the statues, snap pictures and enjoy them.

George Weckman, who has sold hot dogs and pop from a stand in downtown for 25 years, called the Snoopy statues of 2000 "the dogs that save St. Paul" because they brought so many people downtown.

"This year the traffic and business is less," he said recently from behind his stand in Rice Park. But commercialism aside, Weckman said the tributes have been wonderful.

Lee Koch, vice president of the Capital City Partnership, which has overseen the Schulz tributes, said the decision was not easy to forgo another year that could have featured a colorful, huggable statue of Peppermint Patty, Franklin or Pig Pen — or any of the 52 characters that showed up at least once during the 50 years Schulz drew the comic strip.

"It is a success, but we’ve done the four main characters," she said.

There are signs that five years is enough. The number of sponsored statues has been slowly dropping, the amount paid at auction for the statues has slumped and media attention to the statues has waned.

Koch said the tributes met their original goals of providing art scholarships for students and financing permanent tributes to Schulz — bronze vignettes of "Peanuts" characters that are on display in Landmark Plaza (the fourth and final vignette featuring Peppermint Patty and Marcie will be unveiled Sunday).

Even last year, when it was announced that this would be the final summer of the Schulz tribute, there were no angry cries of "Keep on, keep on," said Sue Gonsior, communications director at Capital City Partnership.

Gonsior said the group did receive hundreds of e-mails and calls, almost all of them saying "thank you" for holding the events at all.

"There was one that said thanks for stopping. ‘Stop making St. Paul into Disney World,’ " she said, but that sentiment was a rarity.

For the diehard "Peanuts" fan, all is not lost. Next summer in Santa Rosa, the northern California city of 150,000 where Schulz made his home after leaving St. Paul, there will be "It’s Your Town, Charlie Brown."

It will feature 55 Charlie Brown statues in honor of the 55th anniversary of the first "Peanuts" comic strip, printed on Oct. 2, 1950. The statues will be made by TivoliToo, the St. Paul firm that has made all of those used in St. Paul.

"We’re going to copy what you did," said Santa Rosa City Council Member Janet Condron, "except our design is different. Our Charlie Brown has one hand up, waving."

Weckman is hopeful St. Paul will come up with a new summer attraction.

"You see families walking around, kids playing on these things, people talking to each other. They’ve been a blessing," he said. "They’ve got this excitement built up, people expecting something downtown. They have to do something so they don’t lose it."

Koch said they are working on it, trying to follow up with a promotion true to the St. Paul image the Schulz tributes helped create. Something as safe, family friendly, fun and free.

Book signing today

Jeannie Schulz and Amy Schulz Johnson, Charles Schulz’s wife and daughter, will sign copies of "Vol. 1, The Complete Peanuts," from 11 a.m. to noon today in the West Market area (near the Camp Snoopy dog dish), Mall of America, Bloomington. This book is the first of 25 volumes of Schulz’s comic strips. Pre-orders will be taken for Volume 2, scheduled to be published in October. The women will also attend Sunday’s auction of Snoopy statues in St. Paul.

Sunday party in the park

A "Party in the Park" will wrap up the fifth and final statue promotion with games, food, music and entertainment. The event runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at Landmark Plaza and Rice Park in downtown St. Paul. A bronze sculpture of the "Peanuts" characters will be unveiled between 1 to 130 p.m., followed by a live auction of 25 statues from the "Doghouse Days of Summer" promotion. For information about bidding on one of the statues, go to www.doghousedaysofsummer.com.

Five years, 502 statues

As St. Paul’s five-year tribute to "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz wraps up this weekend, organizers can look back at events that drew unprecedented family visits to downtown each summer weekend.

Here’s a quick-hit look at the summer celebration, the tourist traffic it brought and the funds it raised, based on St. Paul Convention and Visitors Bureau interviews of those who stopped at its information booth and visits to other city attractions

2000 "Peanuts on Parade," 101 Snoopy statues; auction of 61 statues raised $1,041,500 ($17,100 average with a range of $ 35,000 to $6,000); estimated 450,000 visitors;

2001 "Charlie Brown Around Town," 102 Charlie Brown statues; auction of 63 raised $459,000 ($7,300 average, range $30,000 to $3,000); 700,000 visitors;

2002 "Looking for Lucy," 103 Lucy statues; auction of 56 raised $232,000 ($4,100 average, range $19,000 to $2,000); 800,000 visitors;

2003 "Linus Blankets St. Paul," 92 Linus statues; auction of 40 raised $153,000 ($3,800 average, range $8,000 to $1,900); 712,000 visitors;

2004 "Doghouse Days of Summer," 104 Snoopy and Woodstock statues; 25 to be auctioned Sunday; 700,000 visitors.


Snoopy destroyed; Lucy can be repaired

Vandals damage ‘Peanuts’ statues

September 15, 2004

By Karl J. Karlson
The St. Paul Pioneer Press

Vandals attacked two of St. Paul’s "Peanuts" statues in front of A. Johnson and Sons Florist, 1738 Grand Ave., over the weekend, destroying one and damaging the other.

"Snoopy’s Garden Party," a statue from the first-year "Peanuts on Parade" tribute to cartoonist Charles Schulz in 2000, was broken into pieces and may not be fixable, according to Gerald Johnson, a store spokesman.

The nose of the other statue, "Lucy’s Pet Sitting Service" from the 2002 tribute to Schulz, was broken off, he said.

"The Snoopy has an attraction. People came by all the time to look at it," Johnson said.

The attack took place about 230 a.m. Sunday and apparently was carried out by three young men, he said. A neighbor of the store heard the commotion and yelled at the youths, who fled before doing further damage to the Lucy statue.

Both were designed by artist Sheryl Johnson Cain, Gerald Johnson’s daughter.

He said no decision has been made on whether to replace the Snoopy if it cannot be repaired. St. Paul’s five years of summer tributes to Schulz have involved about 500 statues on public display throughout the city.

Over those years, vandalism has been a minor problem, said Sue Gonsior, communications director for Capital City Partnership, which oversees the events.

"This (attack) on the one at Johnson’s is a rarity. People have respected the statues," Gonsior said.


Rare Charles Schultz Work To Be Published In November

August 25, 2004

By Michael A. Diaz
www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com

Charles M. Schulz is the most famous and most influential cartoonist ever, and his Peanuts comic strips have been reprinted in hundreds of books. Yet few people know that during the late 1950s, during a period of great creativity, Schulz was also doing another newspaper comics series. "It’s Only a Game" took a look at people and their pastimes, showing us how we win, how we lose, and how we play the game. This long forgotten work is now being put into a book for the very first time, as About Comics publishes the complete collection "It’s Only a Game."

This treasure trove of lost Schulz material is being dug up at a time when interest in Schulz is running high. Such projects as "The Complete Peanuts," "Li’l Beginnings" (reprinting Schulz’s pre-Peanuts series "Li’l Folks"), and "Peanuts The Art of Charles M. Schulz" are focusing popular and critical attention on Schulz’s work.

People who know Peanuts know that sports was a favorite topic, with Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the crew regularly involved in baseball, football, and hockey. "It’s Only a Game" was a single-panel gag feature that covered all that and more. "Schulz focused the comics mainly on participation sports and games, so there are strips about bowling, bridge, and fishing, as well as the big team sports," explains Nat Gertler, noted Schulz bibliographer and publisher of About Comics. "In fact, it’s rather amazing how broad a range of topics is covered. Over the course of 255 cartoons the series covers everything from Monopoly to rodeo."

Fans are in for an extra treat, because "It’s Only a Game" features mainly adults. Since "Peanuts", "Li’l Folks", and Schulz’s illustration work focused on kids, this is a rare chance to see his talents applied to older characters.

Schulz created the series himself and initially did all the work on it. After the series had run for a while, cartoonist Jim Sasseville did the finished artwork based on Schulz’s sketches. Sasseville provides the book’s commentary, as well as access to some special materials. "Working with Jim was great," explains Gertler. "Not only do we get a lot of insight into how the strip was put together and what it was like working with Schulz, he also gave us access to some of Schulz’s roughs for cartoons that were never used."

Schulz’s widow Jean expressed her enthusiasm for this project. "It is wonderful to see the entire run collected and to read Jim’s reminiscences. Sparky [Charles M. Schulz] spoke highly of Jim’s drawing ability and in this book I can see what he meant." Sasseville is no less effusive about Schulz’s work on the strip, referring to him as "the best cartoonist ever," a view of Schulz that is common in the cartooning world.

Contributing an editorial hand to the book is Derrick Bang, the editor of "Charles M. Schulz 50 Years of Happiness." Derrick also provided the acclaimed commentary for "Li’l Beginnings."

"It’s Only a Game" (ISBN 0-9716338-9-4) is a 240-page 5.5"x6.5" black and white paperback with a color cover. Priced at $14.95, it will be distributed to the comic book stores (by Diamond Comics, FM International, and Cold Cut) and to the bookstores (by Diamond Book Distributors) in November. It can be found on page 197 of the current Previews catalog.


Major League Baseball’s 10 great home-run moments

August 8, 2004

The Seattle Times

1. No home-run compilation would be complete without some mystical feat by Babe Ruth. We’ll skip the obvious — his "did he or didn’t he" called shot off the Cubs’ Charlie Root at Wrigley Field in the 1932 World Series — and focus on his final homer, No. 714. At age 40, playing for the Boston Braves, he summoned his magic one final time on May 25, 1935, cranking three homers in a game against the Pirates. The last one sailed completely out of Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, the first time that feat had been accomplished. Six days later, Ruth retired.

2. Fifteen players have hit four home runs in a single major-league game, most recently Toronto’s Carlos Delgado in 2003. But only one player in professional baseball ever has homered for the cycle. That feat was accomplished by Tyrone Horne, a member of the Cardinals’ Class AA Arkansas Travelers, who on July 27, 1998, hit the ultimate progression of four homers in a game against the San Antonio Missions. He had a two-run homer in the first inning, a grand slam in the second, a solo homer in the fifth and a three-run shot in the sixth. With nothing left to accomplish, Horne struck out in his final at-bat.

3. According to legend, Josh Gibson, the brilliant Negro League catcher, is the only person to ever hit the ball completely out of Yankee Stadium, in any of its incarnations. Mickey Mantle came close on May 30, 1956, with a shot off Washington’s Pedro Ramos that hit about 18 inches from the top of the right-field façade, and with another blast off Kansas City’s Bill Fischer in 1963. And Mantle himself swore he saw Frank Howard hit one out of Yankee Stadium on a drive that was barely foul. But several accounts, none verified, have a Gibson blast exiting the building in 1930, a blast that Sports Illustrated pinpointed to September of that year, off a pitcher named Connie Rector, in a game between Gibson’s Homestead Grays and the Lincoln Giants.

4. Jimmy Piersall, whose nervous breakdown inspired the hyperbolic movie, "Fear Strikes Out," starring the chronically unathletic Anthony Perkins as Piersall ("If nothing else, it probably helped him get cast in ‘Psycho,’ " Piersall would say later), etched his way into the home-run annals in 1963, while playing for the woeful New York Mets. Stuck at 99 career homers, Piersall told teammate Duke Snider, who had just hit his 400th homer, "I’ll bet I get more publicity for my 100th homer than you got for your 400th." And indeed he did, commemorating the achievement — a pop fly over the 258-foot right-field wall at the Polo Grounds — by running around the bases backward. One of his teammates asked why he didn’t run counterclockwise, to which Piersall is said to have snapped, "What do you think, I’m a nut?" Mets manager Casey Stengel, disgusted by the theatrics, released Piersall two days later.

5. Detroit’s Hank Greenberg, the great slugger who in 1938 made one of the most spirited challenges to Babe Ruth’s then-record 60 home runs before finishing with 58, hit one of the most emotional home runs in baseball history in 1945. In May 1941, Greenberg — the American League MVP of 1940 — had been drafted into the Army, the first of many baseball stars to join the service. He was discharged on Dec. 5, 1941, but re-enlisted in the Army Air Corps after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two days later. Greenberg didn’t return to the Tigers until July 1, 1945, when in his first game in more than four years he smashed a home run in front of a roaring Tiger Stadium crowd of 47,721. Greenberg would later that year hit a grand slam in the ninth inning of the final game of the season to help the Tigers beat the St. Louis Browns, 6-3, and clinch the American League pennant.

6. Another great comeback story The White Sox’s Bo Jackson, after missing the entire 1992 season to recover from hip-replacement surgery, hit a stirring, pinch-hit home run in his first at-bat of the 1993 season at Comiskey Park. Jackson was moved to tears by the prolonged standing ovation, and when the ball was retrieved for him, he said, "I’m going to have it bronzed and put on my mother’s tombstone." Jackson had promised his mother, who died the previous April, that he would play baseball again.

7. A special spot in home-run lore is reserved for the inside-the-park version, and perhaps the most memorable in baseball history was executed by none other than Ted Williams, who once characterized this particular round-tripper as the most difficult of his 521 because "I had to run." The homer in question, on Sept. 13, 1946 — Friday the 13th — was memorable for two reasons It came against the infamous "Boudreau shift" devised by Indians manager Lou Boudreau, and it provided the only run in a 1-0 Red Sox victory over Cleveland that clinched the American League pennant. Williams was famously frustrated by the Indians’ shift, in which the defense swung radically over to the right side, leaving the left fielder, stationed behind what would be the normal shortstop position, to solely man the left side. Williams hated to give in and go the opposite way, but this time he sliced the ball down the left-field line, raced around the bases and slid across the plate just ahead of the throw. "It was one of the greatest sights I ever saw," Red Sox pitcher Boo Ferriss later told the Boston Herald.

8. Back in 1998, two divergent careers merged in St. Paul, Minn., where J.D. Drew was biding his time with the St. Paul Saints during a contract dispute with the Philadelphia Phillies, who had drafted him No. 1 but ran into the immovable object known as Scott Boras. Meanwhile, a woman pitcher named Ila Borders was toiling for the Duluth-Superior Dukes, trying to bring gender equality to baseball. The two teams from the independent Northern League met June 30, and, sure enough, Drew found himself batting against Borders in the eighth inning. The count worked to 3-2 before Drew spared himself the indignity of being fanned by Borders, crushing a changeup "halfway to Stillwater," according to the St. Paul Pioneer-Press. A disconsolate Borders told the newspaper afterward, "It just was stupid pitching. I should have given him a pitch he couldn’t hit hard. Instead, I have this attitude that I’m not afraid of anybody, and look what happens."

9. The most misleading home run in major-league history was hit by a Hall of Famer — Hoyt Wilhelm, the knuckleballing pitcher. In his first major-league at-bat, for the New York Giants on April 23, 1952, against the Boston Braves at the Polo Grounds in New York, Wilhelm went yard. It was not a portent of things to come. Wilhelm would pitch for 21 more seasons, in 1,069 more games, the most of any major-league pitcher in history until Dennis Eckersley surpassed him in 1998. He never homered again.

10. On March 30, 1993, a hard-luck player produced a home run even more unlikely than Wilhelm’s, or Duane Kuiper’s lone career blast in 3,379 at-bats. Charlie Brown, after four decades of well-chronicled cartoon futility, connected for a game-winning homer in the ninth inning. His sister, Sally, asked incredulously, "You?" Poor Chuck never did get to kick that football, however.


‘Snoopy! The Musical’

July 26, 2004

By Sarah Hemming
The Financial Times

Both the Bible and Shakespeare have been turned into musicals, so why not Peanuts? After all, the very fact that Snoopy, Woodstock, Charlie Brown and the gang hail from a cartoon strip means that they have the clearly defined characters that make them well-suited to a jaunty musical. Their problems too are instantly recognisable, making them ideal for a catchy song.

Charles Schulz’s creations are held in such affection that there is a warm glow about the whole event. And certainly Snoopy! The Musical, revived here 21 years after its first West End appearance, has oodles of charm and is performed with tremendous snap and crackle.

Yet there are built-in shortcomings. For a start, comic strips are naturally written in short bursts for a quick return, whereas on stage you have to sustain a whole show. Arthur Whitelaw, who conceived, directed and co-wrote the show, overcomes this for the most part, shaping the episodes so that the show gains a certain momentum. But there is also the matter of content. The Bible and Shakespeare have a little more in the way of drama and depth than Peanuts. Sure, the strip is all about life — and the gang reminds us of ourselves when we were young, while at the same time exhibiting very adult hang-ups. But these little bursts of wry recognition and insight don’t add up to a sustaining evening. And it is all just a little bit dated we live in a post-Simpsons world.

But there is no denying that it is well done. The songs (Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady) are breezy and droll, the choreography (Lizzi Gee) is snappy and the performances are delightful. Steven Kynman makes a touchingly troubled Charlie Brown, Alex Woodhall a suitably flaky Woodstock and Robin Armstrong holds the stage as Snoopy. No doggy suit, thank goodness, just white jeans, a T-shirt and an attitude. Armstrong is a neat tap dancer and a very watchable performer. It’s all very jolly. Still, I’m holding out for Fred Basset the Opera.


‘Snoopy! the Musical’

July 25, 2004

By Jake Brunger
Broadway World.com

Snoopy strikes me as a rather bizarre concept for a musical. Though the cartoons themselves are not rooted in time, the audience for which they are intended seems to be more so. Its place nowadays lies in newspapers read by adults, not comics read by children, and those who "grew up on Snoopy" are now too old for the show’s target audience. Having not "grown up on Snoopy," my knowledge was fairly non-existent — even to the fact where I confused one character as being a dog in the stage version. It was, in fact, Woodstock the Bird. Silly me?

The show comes across as an enjoyable revue of colourful song-and-dance numbers, threaded together loosely by familiar characters with easily identifiable personality traits — Sally Brown being the girly-girl, Peppermint Patty being the tomboy and so on. The drawings translate well to the stage with animated expressions and a quirky bold design.

The casting is perfect. Clare Louise Connolly, as blonde Sally Brown, fits ideally into her role. Robin Armstrong has the voice for Snoopy and Kellie Ryan has the feistiness for Patty. But they’re all good, the singing is spot-on and the choreography slick. Highlights in the evening come in the songs, which can easily stand alone out of the context of the show. "Don’t Be Anything Less Than Everything You Can Be" is a rare musical theatre treat performed with great comic timing. By the end of the evening, you find yourself drawn in to Snoopy’s imaginative world (spot the pun!).

The problems that lie with Snoopy are in the material itself. As a production of this show, this Snoopy is easily a definitive outing, and a well-paid tribute to its 21st Anniversary.


A passion for hockey

Snoopy tournament allows former Broad Street Bully to keep on skating

July 18, 2004

By Dewey Forget
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Mel Bridgman, who spent 14 years in the National Hockey League, has a successful business in Southern California. He’s 49 years old and is more than a few pounds over his professional playing weight.

So how does he spend a summer weekend?

On the ice, of course.

Bridgman and his United Nations Old-timers teammates captured the Linus division -- 45-and-older age group -- Saturday at the 29th annual Snoopy’s Senior World Hockey tournament.

The UN team went 3-0 to take the Gold Medal, but for Bridgman and the other participants who gather at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena each year, it’s not about winning — it’s the passion for hockey.

There are divisions for virtually every age, beginning with the "youngsters" (40 and older) to the 75-and-older players, who have such descriptive team names as Millenniums and Pioneer Elites. The tourney continues today with matches beginning at 6 a.m.

"It’s just fun to play. When you retire, you lose that camaraderie with the other players. It’s great to be a part of this tournament," said Bridgman, who was a first-round draft choice of the Philadelphia Flyers in 1975. "I saw an 83-year-old getting ready to play; I just hope I’m walking around at 83.

"Some guys have been coming here 15 to 20 years. They keep coming back because this tourney is for people who really love hockey. The bond is the sport itself."

Bridgman was the Flyers’ captain during theirs days as the Broad Street Bullies, a nickname earned for their rough style of play and the location of their home arena, the Spectrum on Broad Street.

"Sometimes the bully name would overshadow the other parts of our game," Bridgman said.

"We were tough, but we were as good technically as any team in the league. In the 79-80 season, we went 35 games without a loss. Those are great memories."

Bridgman, from Thunder Bay, Ontario, had an outstanding career, leading the league in scoring in the 1974-75 season, and going to the playoffs 11 times, twice making the finals with the Flyers. But his biggest thrills came when his skates touched ice for the first time at both Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens and the Montreal Forum.

"I grew up watching the Montreal Canadiens. My dad was a huge Montreal fan," Bridgman said. "My first time at those places was a great thrill, and it’s probably the most nervous I’ve been."

One reason Bridgman hooked up with the United Nations team was to play with Terry Harper, who had a 21-year career in the NHL, mostly with Montreal.

Harper, 64, won five Stanley Cups with Montreal. He had a goal in the UN’s win Saturday.

Bridgman credits an injury-free career to a lesson he learned in junior hockey.

"There was this one guy that beat me up so badly ... that was the turning point for me," he said.

"I was tough. If I had to fight, I could. Being tough and physical allowed me to play in the NHL."

So what about today’s NHL and its reputation for violence?

"The game has changed. It’s more of a business now, not a passion. I don’t agree with that," Bridgman said.

"When I played in Canada, a certain amount of fighting was allowed. If someone took a dirty shot, you would get mad, drop the gloves and fight.

"I don’t condone violence, but the game is so hard you couldn’t play in the NHL without passion."

Bridgman said he expects to return to Santa Rosa next year to help the UN Old-timers defend their title.

"This tournament is special to me and a lot of people," he said.


Long Beach sculptor works for Peanuts

July 17, 2004

By Tom Hennessy
The Long Beach Press Telegram

Good grief! Stan Pawlowski is at it again.

It is 9 a.m. on a weekday morning, and sculptor Pawlowski, wearing a headpiece that magnifies his subject matter, is putting the finishing touches on a 3-inch replica of America’s most beloved beagle.

About the size of a charm, this particular Snoopy is cast in sterling silver. A perfectionist, Pawlowski is removing the almost invisible rough edges with a tiny file.

It is a tedious process, but it reflects the kind of painstaking detail that, years ago, helped attract the attention of Snoopy’s creator, the late Charles Schulz.

At the time, the cartoonist was examining a larger sculpture of Snoopy and Woodstock, the bird in Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip. In the sculpture, the dog was surrounded by food. That was when Schulz noticed such touches as mustard on a hot dog and sesame seeds on a cheeseburger bun.

From those sculptured details, a friendship was born. Later, Pawlowski made Schulz a copy of the sculpture, with Snoopy cast in 18- karat gold.

But that is getting ahead of the story.

Born in Long Beach, Pawlowski opened his Ski Sculpture studios, 3028 E. Broadway, in 1987. "I kind of grew up sculpting,’ he says. "My mom used to say I started as early as when I was 6 years old.’

For a time, the adult Pawlowski sculpted jewelry for the prestigious firm of Van Cleef and Arpels. Then came the phone call that changed his life.

"I was contacted by a licensee (for Schulz), a man who had seen some of my work. He invited me to come up to Santa Rosa and meet Charles Schulz.

Cartoonist and sculptor came together July 10, 1991. Pawlowski had brought some of his work.

"(Schulz) liked what he saw and invited me to go to lunch with him. We talked. When I came home, I was so inspired by meeting him that I created five little sculptures within a month and took them back up to him.’

The friendship grew. "Who would have known we would hit it off so well?’ says Pawlowski. Before long, Schulz was sending original drawings of his cartoons to Pawlowski as birthday and Christmas gifts.

"He wrote me quite a few letters, too, complimenting me on my sculptures. I thought he was just a complimentary kind of guy, but I learned from his staff that he really liked them.’

The letters and drawings were always signed with Schulz’s nickname, Sparky.

The real Schulz

What kind of man was Schulz? Says Pawlowski, "He was a very intelligent man who loved to read books. We discussed a lot of things together. He was also a person of high morals who expected loyalty from his friends.’

In 2002, Pawlowski began creating a set of five statues of Snoopy, approved by the cartoonist. They are The Astronaut, The Flying Ace, the Magician (with Woodstock, the Peanuts bird), The Scuba Diver, and The Patriot, in which Snoopy is a Minute Man, or, if you prefer, Minute Beagle. Pawlowski’s penchant for detail shows in all of them The design on the astronaut’s arm patch, a starfish on the scuba diver, screws on the Patriot’s rifle, etc.

"People from New England really go for the Patriot model,’ says the sculptor, whose works are featured prominently on Web sites for the Peanuts Collectors Club.

The bronze sculptures, each about a foot tall, sell for $3,000 to $5,000. Small sterling silver works range from about $1,200 to $1,800. It depends on where they are purchased. Art galleries, some in Las Vegas, charge a bit more.

"I can’t set the prices galleries charge, but I’ve always felt we should be on the side of the buyer.’

Sales brisk

Despite the higher prices charged by galleries, their turnover in Peanuts statuary is brisk, says Pawlowski. He also sells to such places as Knott’s Berry Farm. It is not unusual for people, including some from other countries, to buy from him directly at his studio.

Pawlowski has been sculpting Peanuts characters almost as long as he can remember. He was fashioning them in clay for amusement 20 years before he met Schulz.

Although he claims at age 51 to be "slowing down,’ Pawlowski’s studio reveals him to be a workaholic or sculptoholic. Much of the floor is covered with boxes of sculptures waiting to be shipped.

While he may be self-employed, he has something of a tyrant for a boss. He even requires himself to log his work hours on time sheets that are seen by no one but him. On a given day, he is apt to record such particulars as an 11-minute break to create and eat a salad.

"Basically, I’m very busy,’ he says. "I don’t want to get lazy.’

The centerpiece of his studio is a clay model of Charlie Brown with his arm around Snoopy. A bronze version, 4 feet high, stands in Railroad Square in Santa Rosa, where Schulz lived. It was unveiled by Pawlowski himself on March 3, 2001, with Schulz’s widow, Jeanne, looking on.

"The statue has become quite a celebrated icon in our city,’ says Vicki Kumpfer, arts coordinator for Santa Rosa’s Parks and Recreation Department. "It’s located in Depot Park, the heart of Railroad Square, part of our historic district, and right next door to the North Bay, California, Welcome Center.

"We have people coming here all the time to photograph it.’ They include, she says, a lot of visitors from Japan. "The Japanese just seem to love Charlie Brown and Snoopy.’

That love may be universal. From time to time, says Kumpfer, visitors have been known to adorn Charlie and Snoopy with sombreros. And at Christmas time, visitors will leave trademark undernourished Charlie Brown trees, plus scarves, lights and wreaths.

No statues

Schulz would not allow officials to put up a statue of him, as had been proposed, but consented to the Charlie Brown and Snoopy sculpture.

Pawlowski has also created the Charles M. Schulz Award, given for excellence in cartoon and animation work. Less formally, it is called the Sparky Award. Winners have included Dale Messick, Chuck Jones, and Gary Larson.

Schulz died Feb. 12, 2000, the night before his last cartoon appeared in more than 2,500 newspapers worldwide.

Pawlowski designed and installed a several-ton granite bench at the grave site in Sebastopol, near Santa Rosa.

Schulz’s final words from his strip to the public are engraved along the edge of the bench’s seat

"Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy. How can I ever forget them...?"


Snoopy? Hang on

After half a century in showbusiness, Arthur Whitelaw can still find inspiration staging Peanuts.

July 17, 2004

By Tim Teeman
The London Times

Arthur Whitelaw was four when he stood on the stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music "and looked up at the lights and ropes and thought, ‘This is my home, this is my family.’ "

As a Broadway producer, Whitelaw would go on to give Liza Minnelli and Christopher Walken their breaks. He has worked with Alan Bates, Claire Bloom, Julie Christie and many others. His productions have been nominated or won many industry awards -- from Oscars to Obies, the Off-Broadway theatre awards. He is a Tony Award judge and is in London to oversee the 21st-anniversary revival of "Snoopy! The Musical," which hasn’t been seen in the West End since 1983 when it won an Olivier Award.

Whitelaw, 64, celebrated his 50th anniversary in showbusiness last month, but somehow has avoided the worst excesses of luvviedom. He talks with genuine fondness for "Fred" (Ebb, the lyricist), "Celeste" (Holm) -- "one of my dearest friends and eightysomething and just married to a man half her age". It’s hard, he says, to watch adaptations of The Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman, "because I remember them the first time round".

He started in theatre, aged 13, in a play, Mother Was a Bachelor, opposite Billie Burke, who played Glinda the good witch in The Wizard of Oz. "But I soon realised that I didn’t want to be an actor. I know my limitations. I wanted to be on the other side. I get a much bigger thrill standing at the back of the theatre helping put it together."

His first production, aged 21, was an acclaimed revival of the grand MGM musical Best Foot Forward, in which he cast Minnelli. "I remember the day she came to audition. I had no idea who she was. She was just this 15-year-old lanky sweet kid. And, boy, could she sing. When she walked out of the room, I said to my co-producers that I wasn’t going to do the show unless she was in it." (Interestingly, Minnelli’s accompanist that day was Marvin Hamlisch, the film and musical composer, then aged 16.)

Whitelaw and Minnelli have remained friends, and he hopes she will "rise like a phoenix from the ashes" from the mess of her marriage to the producer David Gest. He remembers that when he gave her the part in that first show she invited him to dinner (he then lived 45 minutes outside New York with his parents). "I said I couldn’t come back into Manhattan and she pleaded with me. And I realised she was lonely. She’s always had that need to have people around her."

He and Charles Schulz, who sketched the Peanuts cartoons on which "Snoopy! The Musical" is based (and who died in February 2000), were great friends. He remembers asking Schulz why he kept pumping the strip out without any help. "It would take away all the fun," Schulz told him. Schulz had originally named his strip Li’l Folks and, according to Whitelaw, hated the Peanuts title bestowed on it by its media syndication agency. "He lived a very simple life," says Whitelaw. "Work was the reward for him."

In 1969 Whitelaw met the children on whom Schulz based the strip at a performance of the musical in Minneapolis, where Schulz had attended art school. "They didn’t look anything like ‘Charlie Brown’ or ‘Lucy’, but they were prototypes, archetypes even. Charlie Brown is everyman, Lucy is the Miss Piggy of her generation who gets what she wants by plying all the charms she has, Snoopy is a Walter Mitty figure, and Linus over-intellectualises everything at the expense of his feelings. In my favourite scene Linus is watching TV. Gone With the Wind is on. Lucy sneers that she’s seen it ten times. Linus tells her that it’s the first time he has seen it. Then Lucy delivers the zinger ‘He dumps her in the end.’ "

Whitelaw believes the musical genre has a future. "People need that kind of emotional kick," he says. "But what I don’t understand is why there is so little music being written today. Where are today’s Kerns, Kanders, Ebbs, Gershwins? I want to go to a theatre and come out singing. But today all you’ve got is Sondheim and he’s very cerebral so people emulate him instead of composing something with heart and passion."

Under the aegis of his non-profit American Musical Theatre Group, Whitelaw plans to produce two original works -- one about his hero Ivor Novello, the other based on a Truman Capote story, Children on Their Birthdays, in which a young girl and her mother travel across the US to Los Angeles where the little girl wants to be a movie star.

For the past ten years Whitelaw has also been working on building a performing arts centre in Miami, where he lives. He has started to write his autobiography. "Gloria (Swanson) told me she wrote hers as catharsis, which sounds right. I’ve had pain -- lost my parents, many friends, but it’s been mainly a wonderful life. In 50 years I’ve never had a legitimate job. I’ve always done what I wanted to do."

Whitelaw wants to die "in the trenches" next to the stage he is devoted to. He claims that he has been depressed only when work was scarce. He doesn’t worry about death. "I asked Gloria once, did she ever think about death. ‘Sure, all the time,’ she said. ‘It’s just another adventure.’ Which is true when you think about it." He laughs heartily and shrugs. "I mean nobody’s come back from it so it must be pretty good."


‘Peanuts’ Passion

July 12, 2004

By Molly Millett
The St. Paul Pioneer Press

There are peanut addicts wandering around St. Paul. Or, we should say, "Peanuts" addicts.

All summer long, since 2000, they have haunted the streets, holding cameras, maps and water bottles, at first hunting Snoopy statues ... and then Charlie Brown ... and then Lucy, then Linus and now Snoopy and Woodstock.

Their goal To take photos of every statue in the series honoring Minnesota native Charles Schulz and his world-famous comic strip. The fans paste their photos -- that’s 502 pictures, about 100 for each year -- into special albums or scrapbooks. The " ‘Peanuts’ gang" comes from the Twin Cities but also from neighboring states and as far away as New Jersey or Massachusetts.

"People actually plan their vacations around this," says Sue Gonsior, director of communications for Capital City Partnership, which manages the event. "We get panicky calls from people who need to get a photo of that one last statue to complete their album but can’t find it."

It’s not just parents or grandparents of small children who go on "Peanuts" hunts. The characters’ appeal crosses the generations.

"These are characters that many of us grew up with," Gonsior says.

Since this is supposedly the last summer of the "Peanuts" statues, the Pioneer Press recently interviewed and went "Peanuts hunting" with avid fan Rosalyn Wald of Woodbury, a 57-year-old administrative assistant with St. Paul Travelers.

Q. Tell us about your "Peanuts" obsession -- we mean, hobby.

A. It started in 1962, when I was in the 10th grade. I started reading the cartoon. "Peanuts" reflect the values of the people -- good, clean, wholesome fun. You read them and you chuckle.
I went to college with a "Peanuts" nightshirt, throw pillows, bedspread. For my wedding shower, my mom gave me a scrapbook for all my "Peanuts" stuff. When my husband and I were dating -- we’ve been married 33 years -- he would send me "Peanuts" cards. Pretty soon, all my closet doors were full of "Peanuts" cards.

Q. What was your reaction when you found out about that first "Peanuts" statue series (Snoopy), back in 2000?

A. I thought, "Oh, how clever." I decided I would photograph them all and put them in an album, along with the information that ran in the paper about each one. Now, I have an individual photo album for each statue series.

Q. And do you have photos of every statue, from all five years?

A. I’m missing five Snoopys.

Q. Why go to the trouble to take a photo of each one, when there are maps available that have drawings of the statues?

A. The first year, I just thought they were cute and wanted a picture. After that, I decided to get double prints made and use one set to make into postcards for my younger daughter, who has been working as a missionary. I started by sending her a postcard every day, but then I realized I didn’t have enough news, so I gave them out to friends and family so they could write to her, too.
So she gets one card every day for six weeks. People will write a (Bible) scripture verse, or a word of encouragement, or something about what they’re doing. She works with kids, and they love seeing the postcards, too.

Q. And you make scrapbooks of the statues, too?

A. Yes. Some people scrapbook all of their photos, but I just pick my favorites.

Q. How many hours have you spent on this hobby?

A. How about dollars and gas? (laughs) I spend about four or five nights, about an hour and half to two hours each trip, for the statues located outside of downtown. That’s about 10 hours. And then I also spend about five or six of my lunch hours walking to the ones downtown.
But you know, it’s good, clean fun, and it doesn’t cost anything.

Q. But it must cost a little bit, to develop the film and make the scrapbooks.

A. I guess I do say that I keep Kodak in business!

Q. What do your friends and family think of this hobby?

A. They don’t think I’m totally nuts. Everybody seems to have some type of a hobby or a passion.

Q. What about your husband?

A. There was a time when my husband said, "You know, you’re getting older, you should have a little more adult pastime." He got tired of giving me a "Peanuts" calendar every year. So I went to Precious Moments, but after a few years, he said, "These are kind of pricey, can you go back to ‘Peanuts’?"
Now, my husband drives me to the statues that are outside of downtown. That’s a dedicated guy. Our oldest daughter will come, too.

Q. What gear do you bring on your hunts?

A. A guidebook (map), camera and a piece of paper. When we go out at night, stopping at Dairy Queen is the best part. I know where all the Dairy Queens are now.

Q. So, what are you going to do next summer, when there are no new statues?

A. I guess I’m just going to have to take my walks without my camera. I’m really sad.


Take The Paxil, Charlie Brown

The miserable children of Charles M. Schulz

June 23, 2004

By Peter S. Scholtes
Citypages.com [the Online News and Arts Weekly of the Twin Cities]

Charles M. Schulz
"The Complete Peanuts 1950 to 1952"
Fantagraphics Books

Like a recurring nightmare, the scenario plays itself out over and over again. Charlie Brown walks by a couple of kids or they walk by him. In later strips, they’re both girls. He overhears one of them say, "Good ol’ Charlie Brown"--and then comes the twist. In 1955, she adds, out of earshot, "Good ol’ wishy-washy Charlie Brown." In 1952, he hears her say, "What a wishy-washy character," which makes his squiggly brow droop.

The very first Peanuts, which debuted in seven American newspapers on October 2, 1950, shows him smiling as he passes a boy and a girl. "Good ol’ Charlie Brown," the boy says. "How I hate him!"

Drawn by one man every day for 50 years with a crow-quill pen dipped in ink, the abstract backgrounds of Peanuts are not St. Paul, though the artist grew up here (and we have 104 new plastic Snoopy statues to prove it). They aren’t the veterans’ housing developments where he lived with his first wife in Colorado Springs, either, or the home he made with his second wife in Santa Rosa, California, where he built an ice rink. The thin birch trees, snowy open yards, and endless sidewalks of Charles Monroe Schulz’s drawings are more like the settings in a dream. They’re fantasy playgrounds for characters to run through, like any Popeye or Pogo backdrop, but they’re also a combination of real places that Schulz revisited in his mind until he died, just hours before his final Sunday strip ran on February 13, 2000.

Reading The Complete Peanuts, 1950 to 1952, the first of a planned 25-volume series from Fantagraphics Books, you might guess that Schulz drew Charlie Brown as therapy -- and you might be right. "It took me a long time to become a human being," he said in a 1987 interview, reprinted here. "I never regarded myself as being much and I never regarded myself as being good-looking and I never had a date in high school, because, I thought, who’d want to date me?"

Now his life’s work has been given the reverential hardcover treatment--a handsome design by alternative cartoonist "Seth," essays by Garrison Keillor and Schulz biographer David Michaelis, and the Q&A, which locates Schulz in a wider comics scene he viewed with suspicion. But you can easily imagine why the series never came out while the author was still breathing. Early Peanuts is the humor of a person incapable of seeing himself as important.

"There is not much in Peanuts that is shallow or heedless," writes Keillor in his introduction. And that’s true. But then again, there is not much in Peanuts that is above being stone silly, either. Unlike the comparatively ceremonious animated cartoons, early Schulz is giddy with unimportance. In one strip, Charlie Brown brings a handful of soup to a picnic.

In another, Lucy asks him, "Can I put my hand in your glass of milk?"

"You keep your dirty hand out of my glass of milk!" he says.

And when she goes ahead and plops it in, anyway, he chases her, helpless to assail the absurd purity of her logic "My hands aren’t dirty any more!"

Schulz’s admiration for Lucy is a key to understanding his greatness, and why he’s something more than the Woody Allen of cartoonists -- neurotic vanity on parade, posing as self-examination. Peanuts is funnier than other funnies because it’s so cruelly honest about human weakness. Much has been made of Schulz’s supposed fear of a female planet, and Lucy did become a repository for some of Schulz’s meanness. ("That was Lucy speaking," he once said to Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker, apologizing for a rude remark.) But recognizing that girls inflict pain isn’t sexism. Switch genders on Shermy and Patty, both central characters in the first year, and they show the same narcissism.

What you would lose in that switch is the kids’ noticeable discomfort with assigned gender roles. Girls in Peanuts know they aren’t supposed to be violent -- and can’t help themselves. Boys know they aren’t supposed to be passive. "I can’t accept flowers from a girl!!" says Charlie Brown to Violet. "How would it be if you just snatched them out of my hand?" she says. (In a later strip, Charlie Brown is less abashed "I bet I’d make a pretty good housewife!")

Throughout Schulz’s cartoons, there is a lingering but complicated association between suffering and being good. When people say someone has a "Charlie Brown quality" (especially Minnesota artists such as Keillor, Bob Mould, Slug, etc.) they’re talking about an invisible equal sign between "good" and "grief."

The idea took root in Schulz long before he became active in the Church of God in his 20s. Nicknamed as a baby after Barney Google’s horse Spark Plug, Sparky Schulz grew up to fear travel, but found himself fighting in Europe during World War II. He was drafted not long before his mother died of cancer, and returned home a changed person. He taught at the art correspondence school in Minneapolis and eventually based the Little Red-Haired Girl (Charlie Brown’s unseen and unrequited crush object) on Donna Mae Johnson in accounting. She rejected him to marry Al Wold, and Sparky never got over it. Her daughter once told me over drinks that Donna loved both suitors, but Al had his own place. Sparky still lived at home with Dad in 1950.

Schulz went on to become the most phenomenally successful and influential cartoonist of all time. But the insecurity stayed. Schulz seems to have known that this contradiction implies limits rather than virtues, and his stubborn disappointment is the butt of Peanuts. ("Nobody loves me." "That’s not true, Charlie Brown ... We love you." "Yes, but nobody important loves me!") The artist introduced Lucy as a reminder to Charlie Brown that real-life pain isn’t necessarily heroic. She’s the id to Charlie Brown’s crushed ego, which is why she’s so much funnier than the other characters that make their debut in 1950 to 1952--Schroeder (Schulz’s cute monument to classical-music enthusiasm), Snoopy (still on all fours, but already a cooler version of Schulz), and Linus (a gentle baby).

Lucy is Charlie Brown liberated from the need to please, Sparky freed from the worries that weighed on him in real-life boyhood and adulthood -- doing well in sports, blending in, not offending anybody. Lucy pulls away that football for the first time in 1952 to send Charlie Brown crashing, but you can bet she has a good reason.

"I was afraid your shoes might be dirty, Charlie Brown," she says. "I don’t want anyone with dirty shoes kicking my new football."

Who would?


Dog & birdy show

For couple, ‘Peanuts’ are always on parade

June 3, 2004

By Karl J. Karlson
The St. Paul Pioneer Press

If she ever needs cheering up, Mary Krech just goes to the front door of her contracting business and pushes a red button on a 6-foot-tall statue of Snoopy decked out as an organ grinder.

This starts concertina music that is so familiar that the words to "That’s Amore" pop into your head "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie....’’

The statue is her favorite, the one she is not willing to give up. She and her husband, Willie Krech, have several others. Of the 13 they bought at auction during St. Paul’s first four tributes to "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz, they’ve given away five and sold one.

Five of the remaining seven statues are lined up in the front of the metal building that serves as headquarters for their successful Total Construction and Equipment general and electrical contracting business in Inver Grove Heights.

There’s a spot there for a sixth, which they expect to fill at the Sept. 19 auction of this year’s "Doghouse Days of Summer" statues featuring Snoopy and Woodstock.

"We’ll check them out, see if any catches the eye,’’ Mary Krech says of their selection process.

Willie Krech concedes that their selection system is not very scientific.

"I bid sometimes to start the bidding or if I see a connection to someone we know,’’ he admits.

Which is why they bought the "Grease Monkey Business" Linus statue last year.

"We gave it to our mechanic, Joe. He keeps all our equipment running,’’ Mary Krech says.

The mechanic also helps their son, Bill Krech, with his drag-racing car, which they haul around the United States to 12 to 15 races each year. Bill Krech took over the sport from his father.

Willie Krech looks puzzled when asked if it there is any disconnect between drag racing -- "doing a quarter-mile in 7.22 seconds’’ -- and collecting comic strip character statues. He says "No,’’ but offers little explanation.

Mary Krech says they are usually very business-oriented with the company and don’t spend a lot of time or money on themselves. What they do make time for are the racing thing and the statue thing.

"My daughter-in-law convinced us to go to the first Snoopy auction, and I sort of got caught up in it,’’ she says, adding that she was never a big "Peanuts’’ fan.

The "Peanuts" celebrations, however, have helped them meet some real big fans at the auctions, she says, calling the sales fun events.

"The whole thing is fun. It’s good for St. Paul. There are smiles everywhere,’’ Willie Krech says.

The other statue they want to keep is "School Patrol Linus" with its safety theme "because safety is a big issue in our business. It’s a reminder,’’ Mary Krech says.

They would really like to buy a Minnesota Wild-sponsored statue because they are big hockey fans, but those usually have not been auctioned.

Asked why they don’t sponsor one themselves, Mary Krech says they’ve discussed the idea but never seem to act quickly enough. "Besides, if we sponsor one, then we end up with only one. If we go to the auction, we may end up with two or three,’’ she says.

The Krechs’ ‘Peanuts 13’

Here’s a look at the 13 "Peanuts" statues that Mary and Willie Krech have bought at auction during St. Paul’s first four summertime tributes to Charles Schulz. The list includes their cost and current location

"Joe the Grinder," a 2000 Snoopy, $20,000, lobby of their business, 10195 Inver Grove Trail, Inver Grove Heights.
"Snooper Jock," a 2000 Snoopy, $22,000, Inver Grove Heights Community Center, 8055 Barbara Ave.
"You’re a Winner, Charlie Brown," a 2001 statue, $5,500, in front of their business.
"You’re a Good Scout, Charlie Brown," a 2001 statue, $5,500, in front of their business but frequently lent to Scout troops for various functions.
"Charlie Brown on the Levee," a 2001 statue, $3,000, sold to its original sponsor, Mancini’s Char House in St. Paul.
"Class of ‘06," a 2002 Lucy, $4,500, home of their son, Kevin, in Cannon Falls, Minn.
"Find Your Heart in St. Paul," a 2002 Lucy, $2,000, remade as "Lucy the Electrician," in front of their business.
"Blueprint for Freedom," a 2002 Lucy, $2,500, in front of their business.
"Lucy Ross," a 2002 statue, $6,500, at their Inver Grove Heights residence.
"Grease Monkey Business," a 2003 Linus, $5,500, Inver Grove Heights, residence of their mechanic.
"Blue Boy," a 2003 Linus, $2,500, a gift to Nick Mancini of Mancini’s Char House in St. Paul.
"School Patrol Linus," a 2003 statue, $3,000, in front of their business.
"Teasing Hurts," a 2003 Linus, $1,750, Pine Bend Elementary School, Inver Grove Heights.


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